


Heavy Dirty Soul

by Daniela_is_not_amused



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Badass Sansa Stark, Big Sister Sansa Stark, F/M, Gen, Jon Snow Needs a Hug, Minor Arya Stark/Gendry Waters, Post-Episode: s08e03 The Long Night, Protective Arya Stark, Protective Jon Snow, Protective Sansa Stark, Protective Siblings, Sad Arya Stark, Sad with a Happy Ending, Sansa Stark gets shit done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-16 01:28:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18681349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daniela_is_not_amused/pseuds/Daniela_is_not_amused
Summary: After the battle has ended, the Night King is gone and Arya is proclaimed the saviour of the realm. Living, however, proves itself to be more difficult than expected for a servant of Death. So she decides to step away from Winterfell. "Just for a few days", she promised, "I'll be back in time to march south and finish my list".Jon isn't coping with that. Bran doesn't seem to care. Sansa is the only normal (and understanding) person left in this house. And she's gonna bring back her sister.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As always, this was not beta read and English is not my first language. I own nothing and I'm not making money out of this. 
> 
> Please be kind to me and feel free to chat with me in the comment section. 
> 
> If you could also check my other GOT related works, I'd be very happy.
> 
> Enjoy!

Jon wanted to go after Arya right away, grunting in one-word sentences words about survivors and the free folk and needing more men while simultaneously trying to coordinate the relief efforts, rebuilding all the homes that had been lost during the war, pacify a few dozen lords and allied Houses, repair the castle itself, bury the dead, grunt at Ser Davos about Sansa, grunt at Sansa about Ser Davos, convince everyone around him that he wasn’t sending himself to an early grave, and anything else that allowed him to work instead of think. He had a look in his eyes – raw and frantic and so fundamentally scared - that Sansa hadn’t seen since the battle of the bastards.

Her response was to take over everything he was trying to do and order him to sit with her for a proper talk.

Once Jon got over his initial indignant disbelief (and, really, he shouldn’t have been so offended; it was her job, anyway; Jon had never been good at politics or talking in general), he unleashed seventy-two straight hours of exhaustion and frustration upon her.

“What, so we’re just going to abandon her? Let her waste away in whatever slum she runs to? Let her blame herself for everything and hide away and be alone, instead of here, with us, like she should be?” There was a slight catch in his voice, barely noticeable, that Sansa didn’t miss. She made a note to go see the Maester and make sure he was planning on seeing Jon again for the foreseeable future.

“She needs space to process, Jon.” Sansa looked him in the eye with a straight face. This wasn’t business, it was brother and sister concerned about the welfare of their little sister, and she had to make sure he understood that. “She went through hell, Gods only know what happened to her before she came back to Winterfell, she’s hurting, and now she has to work through it.”

“Which is all the more reason she should be here, letting us help her, instead of running off to somewhere about shit that isn’t even her fault-“

“Because it’s yours.” It was a statement, not a question.

Jon’s face shut down into a blank, shuttered look that told Sansa that she’d hit the nail on the head. He looked at her like he was trying to drill holes through her head with his eyes, and she just stared back, her own face a perfect mask of indifference. Whether he liked it or not, she knew her brother; he could take abuse and accusation and blunt, painful truth and fight it to his dying breath, but show the slightest hint of pity and the conversation was over before it started. So Sansa had to go with the approach that kept him talking.

The staring contest – because that’s what it was, really – went on for a few lingering moments, the hot, heavy air of her chambers thick with tension. But Jon was running on empty - physically, mentally, and emotionally – and was in no shape to get into a battle of patience with Sansa.

“Yes,” he finally spat out, tearing away his gaze like it was causing him pain and wildly grabbing his damp gloves from where they laid on top of Sansa’s desk, fiddling with them to stop his hands from shaking, “because it was my fault. Because I fucked up and dragged her into it when I should’ve just kept her safe in the crypts and it all went to hell and now she’s gone and it’s my. Fucking. Fault. That’s what you want to hear, right? I fucked up, Sansa.”

To punctuate his point, he turned around and threw the gloves back onto the desk, where it would surely wet all of Sansa’s good parchment paper but she couldn’t bring herself to care at that moment.

She wanted to tell him that the crypts hadn’t been safe, either; that she had to fight against wights herself, in order to protect their people but she knew it would only make him worry more.

“That is why we can’t go after her,” she said. “Not because it’s your fault, or mine, or anyone’s, but because as long as we feel like it is, we can’t help her. You know what happens if we try to bring her in now?” Sansa kept her voice even, but allowed her posture to relax just a fraction; a hint of vulnerability she knew wouldn’t go unnoticed.

Slowly, Jon turned back around, meeting her eyes with his own, red with tears and exhaustion. “What?” he said, his voice aggressive but barely above a whisper.

“She takes one look at us, sees that we’re a mess, and comes back whether she wants to or not. She sees that we want her to be fine, to be our little Arya again, so she becomes fine whether or not she actually is. She sees that we blame ourselves so she tells us it’s not our fault while taking the guilt for our guilt on her own shoulders. We try to bring her home before she’s ready, she winds up feeling trapped. I’m not willing to take that risk.”

“So we do this your way, let her run around and train with Needle and do Gods know what with that Gendry boy. Then what?”

“We wait.”

That elicited a small snort and a raised eyebrow from Jon. “That’s it?”

“We wait.” Sansa repeated. “And we hope that she trusts us and herself enough to know when it’s time to come home.”

The room was quiet, the background hum of people working outside filling the air as oppressively as silence. Sansa took her eyes off of Jon for the first time and sat on top of the bed beside her, signaling that she had said her piece and was done.

Jon had all the power and reasons to argue back, to go ahead and call a search for her and Sansa knew it. For all that she could threaten him, tell him that she wouldn’t speak to him ever again unless he respected their sister’s wishes, she also knew there was no way to stop him if he didn’t change his mind. The orders she had given out to Ser Davos and other lords to not bother Jon without first talking with her would only work until the next disaster, whether she liked it or not. This was a decision he had to make himself, so she waited, counting his too-frequent breaths as he considered her argument.

At thirty-seven, he said, “Alright.”

Sansa glanced at him, allowing the smallest hint of a smile to cross her face, before nodding in acknowledgement and walking towards him.

“You know,” Jon said when she was two steps away from him, forcing her to pause, “if we do this, we lose the best lead we’re ever going to have. The hounds won’t be able to find her scent in a few hours, not with all this damn snow. And if we’re wrong, we might never find her again. So I hope you’re really damn sure of yourself right now.”

“I am.”


	2. Chapter 2

Two weeks, Sansa decided, was fair.

For two weeks she refused to dwell on Arya Stark. She didn’t ask Clegane for leads or updates. She didn’t trawl the visiting lords’ conversations for mentions of fierce she-wolves or tiny young girls where they shouldn’t be. She didn’t wonder where she was, how she was doing, or when she was returning.

It was difficult; she had plenty to keep her busy but her heart ached for her sister whenever she walked past her chambers or the training grounds or even Ser Brienne training with Podrick and Ser Jaime. 

She planned for the future, ordered the northern cities to be rebuilt and the dead to be honoured. She gave speeches and made promises and hoped her words and efforts could bring together the disparate group she and Jon had gathered into something that could be called an army. 

She gathered information, coordinating with her most loyal advisors to try and figure out what happened in the south while they were fighting the Night King. She visited her people and re-counted the stocks. She went down to the forges and heard the complaints of the blacksmiths; they too wanted Gendry back, and she did her best to assure them that he’d be back soon. 

She did her part.

But two weeks, she decided, was enough time for Arya to step away from the mess and return home. She would have given her more time but the circumstances were dire and it was time for a bit of motivation.

She finished yet another letter to yet another lord and gave it to Ser Davos for him to take it to the messengers, who accepted it with a knowing look. She let Tyrion know she would be missing their lunch together and suggested maybe inviting Jon or Brienne to eat with him more. And then she left to find the Hound.

A few years before, she’d never stepped close to him willingly. He had been Joffrey’s dog, doing his bidding for him but he had also helped and protected her sister. Besides, he was the best person available to find Arya.

He took a while to be convinced and even more time to get a lead on where Arya might have gone but, eventually, he left Winterfell, only to come back two days later.

The first few leads he followed turned out to be dead ends, sightings that were probably either completely fabricated or greatly misinterpreted. He admitted he hadn’t had high hopes of any of them turning up information, but it was a place to start, and he had very few of those.

Sansa kept doing her part as Lady of Winterfell so Jon wouldn’t try and go look for her himself. For the next days, it was just Sansa, her goals, and whatever information Clegane could dig up, and it brought a sense of clarity that she hadn’t felt in a very long time.

On day twelve, Clegane came across the first lead that showed serious promise – a young girl in boy-ish but good clothing that fought off five thieves that had tried to hurt an eight years old girl and her blind mother. It practically screamed Arya Stark, and once Clegane knew where to look, the rest was startlingly easy.

It was day sixteen when he tracked both Arya and Gendry down in a little village that had been destroyed by Cersei’s soldiers, many years ago, where now only lived a handful of people.

Sandor spent two days watching them, familiarizing himself with their routine and planning his approach. He subtly questioned some of his neighbors, who were of the general consensus that they had arrived in town three weeks prior, kept mostly to themselves, and seemed like a generally pleasant couple who sold them some of the animals they could hunt in the forest. Nobody mentioned her being a Stark or having money.

He rode back to Winterfell and, on day eighteen, Sansa stood in front of their door and knocked.

“Come in, Sansa.” Arya’s voice, muffled by the door, was casual, as if she’d been an expected dinner guest. Which she supposed she was; while most people probably wouldn’t have noticed Sansa’s presence, let alone Clegane’s in the prior weeks, in the neighborhood, it was very unlikely to have slipped Arya’s radar. She hadn’t tried very hard to hide herself, giving her sister one last chance to bolt.

The fact that Arya was still there strengthened her resolve. At least part of Arya wanted to come home, a part large enough to overpower her fugitive survival instincts.

The hinges creaked slightly as she opened the door – not enough to be annoying but just enough to be noticeable, an instant warning if anyone tried to come in. It wasn’t a problem she had noticed with any other doors in the nearby houses, and the corner of her mouth ticked upward in a combination of amusement and pride.

“After all those years in the South, I didn’t know you could stand it this cold.” They were closer to the wall than to Winterfell and the winter chill had settled into Sansa’s bones, and she knew that, as time went by, it would only get colder.

Arya’s lips pressed together in the small, not-quite-smile she had seen many times before. “Cold doesn’t matter when you’re hiding and I think us Starks can handle a few winter snows.” The teasing edge to her voice, along with the way she didn’t avert her eyes when mentioning their family’s name, was promising.

“Besides,” he continued, “I’ve found that being a fugitive becomes rather easier when you hide among other fugitives.”

Sansa could feel Arya’s gaze on her face, trying to gauge her reaction and get a sense of what she was dealing with, if Sansa was going to order Clegane to drag her back to Winterfell or use Gendry as a way to bring her back. 

So Sansa rose to the challenge, staring right back at her and using the opportunity to take in her appearance up close. She was lean, but not noticeably thinner than the had been the last time she’d seen her. That was good, she mused to herself, Arya was already far too skinny for her own good. The vests and armour Sansa had gifted her were gone and the clothes she wore were well-worn and secondhand, but clean and warm. Her hair was still the same but, if the handkerchief forgotten on the table behind her was anything to go by, it had been hidden from prying eyes for most of the time. Unless one was really looking, and knew her or Gendry from up close, they would never even begin to think that the girl standing before her was Arya Stark.

They stood there, staring, and the moment lingered just long enough to become awkward. Eventually it was Gendry who broke the silence, stumbling into the house, complaining about the snow and, for Sansa’s surprise, Nymeria and four more wolves walked in behind him. 

He stopped in his tracks when he realized that Arya had company and his eyes wandered across the room.

“Lady Sansa, I-”

“Why don’t you have a seat?”, Arya’s cut him off, gesturing towards the battered table pushed into one corner of the room, with two mismatched and equally battered chairs next to it. “I had been wondering when you were going to show up, but I’m afraid your timing is rather bad. I have to go and deliver today’s catch before it starts to rot.”

Sansa wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to hunt and sell her catch anymore, that they could just pack her things and go back to Winterfell but Arya’s face told her she wouldn’t win this fight. She nodded, silently, and watched as Arya grabbed her sack and walked towards the door.

“It shouldn’t take more than an hour and you’re welcome to stay here, of course; it is rather cold outside.”

Sansa smiled slightly at the joke, another good sign, and nodded, sitting down in the chair closest to the corner, which gave her a full view of the small room. “Yes, I suppose it is. I’ll be fine here.”

Arya nodded in acknowledgement and started towards the door, hesitating slightly, as if she thought she should say something more, before gesturing for Nymeria to stay and continuing. The hinges creaked as she left.

Once the sound of her footsteps disappeared from hearing, Sansa shrugged off her coat and draped it across the back of her chair, removing her gloves as well. Sandor kept himself close to the wall, eyeing Gendry with distrust, who had busied himself by boiling some water for the tea. She glanced around the room, taking note of the few belongings – a couple of swords and knives, a leather bound journal she was certain would be full of maps and designs for new weapons, an old blanket sitting by the window, and two sacs that were still mostly full.

She resolutely did not follow her, did not sneak out the window to go see if “deliver today’s catch” actually meant “running into the forest and never return”. Trusting people, after everything she had been through, was still a fairly new experience for her, but she knew she could trust her sister.

Sansa waited.


	3. Chapter 3

Almost an hour later, the creak of the hinges informed Sansa that Arya had returned.

There was mud and melting snow on her clothes and a streak of ashes on her forehead, but she didn’t seem mad and her sac had returned empty.

“That’s done. I apologize for taking so long” she said, softly and she closed the door, as if she was the one running late and Sansa hadn’t shown up unannounced at her doorstep. “I see Gendry already made you tea.”

Sansa allowed herself a smile, both at the ridiculous nature of Gendry’s hospitality, who not only had shared their tea with her but also the last fresh bread they had and some sweet wine, and the prospect of having a proper conversation with her sister. “Yes. He was very kind.”

Arya didn’t respond, instead letting the room fall into the comfortable silence they both preferred as she washed her hands and face in a bowl by the kitchen counter. She moved slowly as she took a cup that had seen better days down from the cabinet and deliberated over the available beverages, even though from what Sansa could see there were only two options. It felt like one of the calm, early mornings at the castle, back when they were children and when the two of them had often been the only ones up, their Lord Father gone hunting and Lady Mother tending to little Rickon, and would share the dining hall without saying a word.

Sansa waited, giving her an opportunity to to speak as she set down a steaming mug in front of her and slid into the remaining chair, but she remained quiet, obviously expecting her to begin the conversation. In the background, Gendry and Clegane had stepped outside to give them some privacy.

“I think it’s time for you to come home.” Sansa had never been one to waste words with her family, except when the occasion required it, in which case they weren’t actually wasted. She figured she might as well cut straight to the point.

Arya’s face twisted into a wry smile that reminded her almost painfully of the first few days when Arya had just returned to Winterfell. “Which home would that be, exactly? We both know that we’ll have to march South soon and there’s not much left for me to do in Winterfell, not as long Cersei lives.”

“There is, if you want.”

“Like what?”

Sansa forced herself to suppress her sigh, but still felt her lip quiver in desperation. “We can set you back up in the castle and having you command the tropes there. You can train from there and help Ser Brienne train our army, you can help me with Jon so he doesn’t decide to run to the South with nothing but a sword in his hand and a handful of men. There are plenty of options here and you’re just as aware of that as I am so why don’t stop pretending and talk about what the actual problem is.”

The trace of Arya’s smirk disappeared, and Sansa could tell that she was wringing her hands under the table, most likely aching for Needle or her dagger. “And then what? If I tell you my reasons and explain everything and the end result is still that don’t want to go back to Winterfell, that I’ll join you mid-way to the South in a few days, will you accept that?” Her voice was soft, but in a way they both knew was forced; Sansa could hear the edges of bitterness seeping through her harmless, mild-mannered mask.

“Look at me, Arya” she said, waiting until the young girl to lift her head and met her eyes to continue. “I am not here to force you to do anything. No one told me to come, no one is giving me orders, no one is expecting you. I’m your sister, not the Lady of Winterfell or Jon’s advisor, and the only reason that I’m here is because I want what’s best for you. And I think you already know that this isn’t it regardless of what you’ve been telling yourself.”

Arya continued to stare at her for a moment, her face a portrait of weariness that made her look older than her years, even older than Sansa or Jon themselves, before sighing. “Do you mind if it’s a long story?”

“Not at all.”

Arya shifted her gaze downward before eyeing the door, and Sansa hoped that she was only checking on Gendry and not planning on escaping, and took a deep breath. “While I was in Bravos, I trained to be a faceless man. I was taught how to fight, how to lie, how to move around without being noticed. Whosoever face I wore, whatever stories I made up, I learnt how to become that person, despite never have meeting them while they lived.”

She paused, blowing steam from her tea and glancing back up at Sansa, whose eyes had never moved from her face. “My lies became my truth and I became the faces. I was taught how to be No One. ”

A small laugh escaped her lips, equal parts genuine and bitter, sending shiver down Sansa’s back. “They wanted me to forget Father, Mother, Bran and Robb and Jon and Rickon and you but I couldn’t… I couldn’t let them take that from me. So I left and when I heard about Jon being alive, I came back to Winterfell.

“I thought I could go back to being Arya Stark, that my memories of our family and our lives before this war started were enough to keep me from becoming No One but.. I also wanted to get out, use all those years of training to finish off my list and avenge everything our family went through… But you and Jon, and even Bran, wanted me to be Arya, to stay by your side and I don’t know what to do.”

Sansa sipped her tea, giving her sister time to gather her thoughts and go on. After a few moments of nothing, it became clear that she needed prompting. “Hence your desire to get the hell out of Winterfell once we’re done with the Night King.”

The strange smirk returned to Arya’s face. “It was not, admittedly, my finest moment. I knew at the time that it was somewhat of a selfish decision, even a cowardly one, as much as I tried to rationalize it. But I knew I had to make a choice and I thought of you and Jon and the North and that you don’t need that kind of problems, not with all the mess we already have and…” she trailed off.

“And you couldn’t trust yourself around us.” There was no dancing around what Arya was obviously uncomfortable referencing. Sansa didn’t regret it.

“Yes.” Arya let out another small sigh, running her hands over her short hair. “We’ve changed. We grew up, the war changed us in ways we can’t control and we don’t know everything about each other. For years, all I had to keep me going was to kill Cersei and avenge our family. That was the only way I had to keep myself alive but, in order to do so, I had to give up being Arya Stark because Arya Stark was a weak child that trusted far too easily and needed her family to survive. Arya Stark wouldn’t be able to kill Cersei.”

“But you’re still Arya.” Sansa remarked, prompting the younger girl to look up.

“I’m not.” she said without hesitation. “Arya Stark is not an assassin. Arya Stark wouldn’t run away from her home and leave her family behind.”

There was a raw edge creeping into Arya’s voice, and Sansa could tell that this conversation was wearing her down. She had become such a closed-off person, someone to whom repression was second nature and deflection instinct, that being so honest was always emotionally exhausting. Sansa could empathize; she was the same way, and she figured it was time for her to hold up her end of the conversation.

“When you came back, you told me that I had survived the Lannisters and became of Lady of Winterfell and that had changed me.”

Arya opened her mouth to protest, but Sansa shut her down with a glare. “You had your turn, let me have mine. There are parts of my life, large parts, that I cannot put together because they are too painful for me to remember. I have bits and pieces, but no coherence. All I know is that since I stepped in King’s Landing I have been the product of other people’s cruel decisions. 

“When I returned to Winterfell, when I met Jon after all those years and we took back our home, I didn’t feel like I deserved being here either. After all those years of only surviving, living seemed to me too much of a blessing, specially after how cruel I had being to Jon as a child.”

Sansa paused, sipping her tea. It wasn’t her first time expressing these sentiments – most of them were the product of long conversations with either Jon himself, the Maester, or Bran – but trying to present them in a neat, coherent package was nearly impossible. “I’m not the same girl I was before this whole nightmare started, none of us are. I’ve made things I’m not proud of while I  was fighting for my freedom and for the North. That’s not an issue, we are at war, after all, but the expectation that comes with being Lady Sansa Stark once again, that I should be something better than I am, something closer to what I used to be, is difficult. I started to think that maybe I was just trapping myself by putting myself next to an ideal I could never become.”

There was another pause. They stared at each other, as if trying to see who’d cave in first. When Arya didn’t make another move, Sansa cleared her throat and continued.

“You came back, you helped us. You helped me with Jon and Daenerys and you protected us until the last moment of battle. Only Arya would do that for us.”

The last statement was perhaps a bit pointed, but Sansa didn’t care. She knew Arya understood what she was saying, but the question now was whether or not she would listen.

They sat in silence, sipping their tea. Sansa could see the gears turning in her sister’s head, the way she was weighing each of her options and trying to come to a decision. When they had both finished their drinks, she wordlessly got up to take the empty cups over to the kitchen, rising and drying them before returning to the table.

“I want to do this,” she began, “but I have some conditions and I need to establish them before we do anything.”

Sansa nodded. “That’s fair.” She had basically driven the same bargain with Jon, all those months before when he was still King and she was helping him rule the North. It was basic negotiation: never assume that anything was implicitly understood, always state things outright so the other party couldn’t claim ignorance.

“First off, I’m not going to talk about my past or my time here unless I want to. I’ll train with you and fight Cersei’s army but that’s it. I can go to the council meetings but I don’t want to bargain with the Targaryen Queen.”

Her voice was firm, leaving no room for argument. Sansa had expected as much. “That’s fine. But you should, as yourself, get to know the new Lords and Daenerys to some extent, build the implicit trust that require of all the Starks. We can’t have them thinking you’re going to betray or abbadon the North just because they don’t know you enough.”

She could tell Arya was suppressing a grimace at the mention of having to interact with the Lords, and, yeah, that was going to be a somewhat awkward situation but even Arya’s distaste for politics wasn’t enough to keep her from seeing the reality.

“Acceptable, and admittedly necessary,” she said, fiddling with her fingers. “I’m staying at the castle but I don’t want anyone following me all day, making sure I’m still there. Specially not Clegane or Jon himself.”

Once again, it was nothing unexpected; even before their Lord Father had become the Hand of the King, Arya always liked to roam around, freely, without anyone to keep an eye on her.

“I had assumed as much. Anything else?”

“That’s it.” Arya stood, prompting Sansa to do the same. “It’s getting late and it’s gonna start to snow soon. I say you stay here for the night, there’s an empty chamber in the back and we can give Clegane some furs to sleep on by the fire. We can leave tomorrow at dawn.”

Sansa smiled at her sister, who, for the first time in a while, smiled back. “I’d love to.”

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.


End file.
